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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
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http://archive.org/details/greatportraitschOOhale 


GREAT  PORTRAITS 
CJiltirm 


KING  OF  ROME 

LAWEENCE 
EEAUX-ARTS  GALLEHT,  PAEIS 


GREAT  PORTRAITS 

By  Philip  L.   Hale 


BOSTON,    MASS. 

BATES   &   GUILD    COMPANY 

M  C  M I  X 


Copyright,    1909,   by 
Bates   S^   Guild   Company 


Printed  at  The  Everett  Press,  Boston 


7WE  GETTY  ' 


LIST   OF    PLATES 

KING  OF  ROME Lawrence 

Beaux-Arts  Gallery,  Paris 

STRAWBERRY  GIRL Reynolds 

Hertford  House,  London 

DON  BALTASAR  CARLOS  ON  HORSEBACK Velasquez 

Prado,  Madrid 

MAIDS  OF  HONOR Velasquez 

Prado,  Madrid 

INFANTA  MARGARITA Velasquez 

Louvre,  Paris 

THE  BLUE  BOY Gainsborough 

Duke  of  Westminster  Collection,  London 

LOUIS,  DAUPHIN  OF  FRANCE La  Tour 

Louvre,  Paris 

MADAME  LOUISE  OF  FRANCE  Nattier 

Palace  of  Versailles 

CHILD  WITH  BLOND  HAIR  Fragonard 

Wallace  Gallery,  London 

DON  GARCIA  WITH  A  BIRD Bronzino 

Uffizi  Gallery,  Florence 

THE  BROKEN  PITCHER Greuze 

Louvre,  Paris 

MADAME  VIGEE  LEBRUN  AND  DAUGHTER Vigee  Lebrun 

Louvre,  Paris 

QUEEN  OF  SICILY Goya 

Collection  of  Comtesse  de  Paris 

HOLBEIN'S  WIFE  AND  CHILDREN Holbein 

Basle  Museum 

PORTRAIT  OF  MISS  ALEXANDER Whistler 

Property  of  W.  C.  Alexander 

BOY  WITH  A  SWORD Manet 

Metropolitan  Mtiseum,,  New  York 

RUBENS'S  SONS Rubens 

Liechtenstein  Gallery,  Vienna 

WILLIAM  n.  OF  NASSAU Van  Dyck 

Hermitage  Gallery,  St.  Petersburg 

PORTRAIT  OF  COUNTESS  MOLLIEN Greuze 

Private  Collection 

ST.  JOHN  THE  BAPTIST Donatello 

National  Museum,  Florence 


STRA'W'BERHY  GIEIi 

EEYXOI.DS 
HERTFOED  HOUSE,  LOITBOTr 


GREAT  PORTRAITS: 

C|)Ubren 

PORTRAITS  of  children  were  not  so  common  as 
those  of  men  and  women.  And  one  wonders  at 
this  when  one  reflects  that  nowadays  fond  mothers 
are  constantly  taking  their  children  to  the  photog- 
rapher. Indeed,  it  would  seem  in  this  time  that  chil- 
dren were  photographed  much  more  than  their  elders. 
But  this  is  the  era  of  children.  In  the  olden  days  par- 
ents, no  doubt,  loved  their  children,  but  if  any  money 
were  to  be  spent  on  portraits  it  was  the  father  and 
mother  who  were  painted  first  — later,  it  may  be,  the 
child.  In  royal  families  especially  there  was  a  reason 
for  this;  for  portraits  were  painted  largely  as  gifts  to 
other  sovereigns,  or  great  lords,  or  devoted  courtiers. 
The  king  had  his  portrait  painted  often,  almost,  as  one 
might  say,  as  a  matter  of  business.  Sometimes  a  httle 
prince  was  painted,  but  merely  for  love  of  the  child. 
And  for  the  same  reason,  outside  of  the  portraits  of 
royal  children,  few  portraits  of  children  have  come 
down  to  us.  So  it  was  with  the  nobility,  and  so,  too, 
with  the  commoners  —  even  more  so. 


11 


12  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

Still,  practically  every  great  painter  has  tried  his 
hand  at  painting  children  at  least  once  or  twice,  and 
most  of  them  have  produced  excellent  work;  only  a 
man  may  turn  out  a  very  respectable  portrait  of  a  child 
and  yet  not  be  a  true  painter  of  children.  To  do  that 
well  there  is  needed  a  certain  insight  into  child  charac- 
ter. Not  that  a  child  has  a  very  subtle  or  complicated 
character,  but  it  is  a  character  all  the  same  and  one 
that  can  be  divined  only  by  sympathy. 

Constable  once  said  that  '  *  to  a  man  who  approached 
Nature  in  an  arrogant  spirit  her  choicest  beauties  re- 
mained forever  veiled. ' '  One  might  'say  this  particularly 
about  children.  We  feel  instinctively  that  only  those 
who  love  children  can  paint  them. 

Each  great  painter  of  children  has  had  his  own 
manner.  Bronzino  was  hard  and  cold  in  his  style,  yet 
no  man  ever  studied  the  subtlest  curves  of  a  child  face 
more  minutely  and  patiently  than  he.  Velasquez's  chil- 
dren are  delightful;  but  there  is  in  them,  as  in  all  his 
portraits,  a  sense  of  aloofness,  as  if  the  artist  recorded 
all  the  beautiful  aspects  of  the  apparition  with  a  mind 
apt  for  insight,  but  perhaps  not  very  sympathetic.  Rey- 
nolds's children  are  often  delightful.  One  likes  to  think 
of  the  chill  old  bachelor  pleasing  himself  by  recording 
their  infantile  charm.  Madame  Vigee  Lebrun  is  the 
only  mother,  of  the  older  artists,  who  has  painted  her 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  13 

child,  and  she  is  dehghtful,  full  of  demure  French 
charm.  Yet  there  is  little  sense  of  passionate  mother- 
love.  Indeed,  Cairiere's  pictures  of  mothers  fervently 
bussing  their  children  suggest  more  of  this  famous 
mother- love  than  does  anything  of  Lebrun's. 

One  of  the  charming  and  pathetic  things  about  these 
mother  pictures  which  one  notices  in  life,  as  well  as  in 
Carriere's  and  Melcher's  pictures,  is  that  the  child  is 
cold  and  indifferent  to  his  mother's  passion.  One  re- 
calls the  story  of  a  child  saying  to  her  mother,  whose 
face  was  crushed  against  the  childish  cheek,  **What 
are  you  smelling  me  for?  I  isn't  a  flower." 

But  the  child  does  have  the  charm  of  a  flower,  and 
it  is  by  its  freshness  and  fragrance  that  it  attracts  and 
enthrals  not  only  mothers,  but  every  one  else.  Emer- 
son points  out  in  his  essay  on  'Self- Reliance'  that  a  baby 
dominates  a  household  because  it  is  the  only  one  that 
knows  definitely  just  what  it  wants  and  insists  on  get- 
ting it.  But  this  self-reliance  would  hardly  avail  if  it 
were  not  for  the  affection  the  child's  helplessness  in- 
spires. That  very  helplessness  and  gracious  awkward- 
ness of  a  child  awakens  our  sympathy.  There  is,  indeed, 
something  about  the  young  of  all  species  that  delights 
us  in  a  manner  that  the  older  animals  seldom  achieve. 
What  can  be  more  delicious  than  a  young  lamb  caper- 
ing feebly  about?   Yet,  save  to  the  professional  sheep- 


14  Great   Portraits  :  Children 

painter,  a  mutton  is  an  unlovely  thing.  A  kid  is  de- 
lightful in  its  grace  and  spirit;  a  goat  is  almost  a  synonym 
for  obstinacy  and  ugliness.  And  one  fancies  that  if 
the  animals,  or  some  man  from  Mars,  had  anything 
to  say  about  us  they  would  find  our  great  men  mulish; 
our  handsome  women  a  trifle  cowlike;  but  a  child  is 
alway  lovely — to  every  species,  to  every  being. 

The  problems  involved  in  painting  a  child's  portrait 
are  very  different  from  those  which  one  faces  in  doing 
the  portrait  of  a  man  or  of  a  woman.  While  psychol- 
ogy in  portraiture  is  in  a  rather  embryonic  state,  still 
there  is  a  certain  effort  in  a  man's  portrait  to  state 
something  of  his  character — what  sort  of  man  he  is;  to 
give,  even,  so  far  as  may  be  in  portraiture,  some  sug- 
gestion of  his  habits  of  life,  even  his  profession,  since 
one  conceives  that  a  soldier  would  look  different  from  a 
clergyman,  or  a  business  man  from  a  poet.  And  so  it 
is  in  a  woman's  portrait:  besides  making  her  pretty,  the 
serious  painter  may  try  to  give  an  idea  of  what  thoughts 
dominate  her  life. 

Now  with  a  child  the  matter  is  quite  different.  He 
has  no  fixed  habits;  such  little  thoughts  as  he  indulges 
in  are  of  a  very  simple  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
is  delightful,  from  his  youth,  his  freshness  and  gaiety; 

"Drunk  with  life's  new  wine." 


DON  BALTASAR  CARLOS  OX  HORSEBACK 

VELASaUEZ 
PUADO,  MADBU) 


MAIDS   OF  HOICOR 

VEIiASQUEZ 
PKADO,  MADEIIJ 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  19 


The  problem,  then,  is  to  render  this  dehcious  joyous- 
ness,  this  flower-Hke  freshness.     For,  indeed,  one  may 
say  that  a  child  is  like  a  very  young  plant,  and  should 
be  painted  in  such  a  way  as  to  indicate  its  softness, 
tenderness,  yet  vital  strength.     One  might  say  that  a 
child  should  be  painted  like  a  flower,  just  as  one  might 
try  to  paint  a  fine  old  man  like  a  lion  or  like  a  rock. 
One  feels  in  an  elder's  portrait  that  the  form  is  all  im- 
portant; that  this  must  be  rendered  though  all  else  fail. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  a  child's  portrait  one  is  willing 
to  forgive  some  slight  looseness  or  vagueness  if  the  fra- 
grance and  sweetness  of  the  little  creature  only  be  pre- 
served.    Indeed,  it  might  be  said  that  the  painting  of 
children  partakes  more  of  the  nature  of  still  life  than 
does  the  portraiture  of  oldsters.     Not  that  children  are 
very  still:  indeed,  as  we  all  know,  quite  the  opposite  is 
true.     But,  just  as  in  a  good  still  life  the  painter  strives 
particularly  for  qualities  of  texture,  color,  and  surface 
bloom,  even  so,  in  the  portrait  of  a  child,  these  are  the 
things  that  we  desire,  rather  than  any  indication  that 
the  child  is  a  prodigy.     And  one  might  go  further  than 
this  and  say  that  it  is  in  just  these  matters  that  al- 
most all  great  portraits  of  children,  even  the  greatest, 
seem  rather  weak.     Bronzino,  with  all  his  magnificent 
draftsmanship,  makes  his  little  eidolons  as  hard  as  steel; 
Velasquez's   princesses,   though   well   enveloped   with 


20  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

air,  lack  pulpiness.  And  so  one  might  go  down  the  list. 
With  all  their  splendid  qualities,  Reynolds's  children 
are  bready,  Madame  Lebrun's  are  bloodless,  Gains- 
borough's are  scratchy. 

How,  then,  would  one  enjoy  a  picture  of  a  child 
which  had  something  of  the  look,  the  texture  and  con- 
sistency of  a  well-painted  peach !  Some  of  the  impres- 
sionists, notably  Renoir,  who  painted  flowers  and  fruit 
delightfully,  also  painted  children  with  great  charm. 
One  of  his  portraits  in  Mr.  Durand  Ruel's  house  is  al- 
most as  beautifully  drawn  as  an  Ingres,  and  at  the  same 
time  has  a  charm  of  color,  a  sense  of  surface  and  of  tex- 
ture, that  is  quite  unique. 

Still,  this  is,  no  doubt,  one  of  the  things  most  lack- 
ing in  many  children's  portraits— that  fresh,  dewy  look 
which  makes  for  our  delight  in  them.  The  elder  men, 
for  the  most  part,  painted  by  a  certain  receipt  as  far  as 
color  went,  which  included  a  number  of  browns.  So  it 
happened  that  generally  those  exquisite  pearly  tints 
which  are  among  the  loveliest  colors  in  a  child's  face 
went  wholly  unrecorded.  One  should  make  an  excep- 
tion for  Velasquez,  who  had  an  intuition  for  color  which 
at  times  carried  him  out  of  and  beyond  his  usual  man- 
ner and  practice. 

In  his  portrait  of  the  '  Infanta  Margarita'  one  notes 
the  tender  pearly  tints  above  the  temples  beautifully 


INFANTA  MARGARITA 

VELASQUEZ 
LOUVEE,  PAHIS 


THE  BLUE  BOY 
GAIXSBOKO  trail 

UUKK  Ob'  WKSTMIXSTEK  COLLKCTIOX,  I.OXDOX 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  25 

rendered.  On  the  other  hand,  in  'Las  Meninas,'  where 
the  same  Httle  princess  appears,  the  tones  of  the  face 
are  more  ashy  — probably  because,  since  the  picture  was 
at  a  much  wider  angle  of  vision,  Velasquez  felt  disin- 
clined to  study  any  very  small  felicities  of  color. 

As  to  the  English  painters,  they  quite  often 
achieved  handsome  color;  but  very  seldom,  one  might 
almost  say  never,  did  they  make  very  true  color.  Gains- 
borough was  happier  and  truer  in  this  respect  than  the 
rest.  His  'Mrs.  Siddons'  is  one  of  the  few  English  pic- 
tures of  his  time  that  shows  an  effort  at  rendering  silvery 
nuances.  But  even  Gainsborough,  as  a  rule,  made  his 
pictures  too  warm  in  tone,  so  that  the  famous  'Blue 
Boy'  is  really  a  Green  Boy.  This  defect  was  unfortu- 
nate enough  in  men's  portraits  and  in  women's,  but  even 
more  so  in  the  portraits  of  children,  because  the  distin- 
guishing mark  in  children's  color,  especially  in  blonde 
children  of  northern  blood,  is  the  pearly  argentine  qual- 
ity about  the  brow  and  temples.  The  whole  color- 
scheme  has  to  be  constructed  to  ring  true  with  these 
silvery  notes;  and  when,  as  in  most  English  portraits, 
the  color-scheme  was  already  constructed  on  a  golden 
Venetian  basis  the  color  of  the  child's  face  had  to  be 
sacrificed  to  "go"  with  the  warm  tones  about  it.  So  it 
happens  that  most  of  the  Reynolds,  Romney,  Hoppner, 
children,  even  the  most  charming  of  them,  are  usually 


26  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

yellow-faced  little  people,  lacking  the  distinctive  charm 
of  the  little  ones  of  northern  races. 

Madame  Vigee  Lebrun,  and  most  of  the  other  French 
academic  painters  of  that  time,  while  their  color  was 
truer  as  far  as  the  local  tones  went,  did  not  know  how 
to  make  the  pulsating,  palpitating  look  of  live  color 
which  is  particularly  noticeable  in  children.  This  sil- 
very tone,  we  have  already  noted,  comes  about  from  the 
extremely  thin  skin  of  northern  children. 

A  color  which  in  itself  is  of  one  hue  will  look  quite 
different  when  seen  through  a  translucent  medium. 
And  so  it  happens  that  red  blood,  which  does  not  show 
at  all  through  the  thickest  skin  and  looks  greenish 
through  yellow  skin,  looks  almost  blue  through  the  del- 
icate thin  skin  of  a  Teutonic  child.  This  is  how  the  ex- 
pression "blue  blood"  came  about;  the  "Sangre  Azul" 
of  the  Spanish  Visigoths  was  famous  because  their  blood 
showed  blue  through  their  delicate  blonde  northern  skin 
in  contrast  to  the  dark,  dingy  complexions  about  them. 

One  of  the  reasons  why  Renoir  has  been  so  success- 
ful in  some  of  his  portraits  of  children  is  from  his  im- 
pressionist method;  for  so,  more  than  in  any  other  way, 
can  the  pulsating  look  of  life  be  rendered.  One  does 
not  feel  so  much  the  lack  of  this  palpitating,  almost  ir- 
idescent quality  in  a  man's  portrait,  where  character, 
after  all,  is  the  main  thing;  even  in  a  woman's  portrait 


LOUIS,  DAUPHIX  OF  FRAXCE 

LA  TOCH 
IXJtrVIRE,   PAKIS 


MADAME  LOUISE  OF  FRANCE 

XATTIEE 
PAI.AGE  OF  VEWSAIT.T.ES 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  31 

one  is  willing  to  overlook  it,  if  only  the  form  be  beauti- 
fully rendered;  but  in  a  child's  portrait  it  is  most  essen- 
tial, because  it  is  the  chief  charm  that  a  child  has  to 
show.  For  one  does  not  expect  great  intellect  or  even 
character  in  children;  they  have  their  own  character, 
to  be  sure,  but  it  is  of  a  much  less  complicated  sort  than 
that  of  a  man.  Nor  does  one  expect  subtle  form;  their 
forms  are  beautiful  to  us  because  we  love  them,  but 
they  are  not  so  complicated,  so  difficult  to  trace,  as 
those  of  their  elders.  But  the  color  of  the  child  is  subt- 
ler, more  exquisite,  than  in  older  people.  It  is,  indeed, 
the  child's  chief  charm,  and  if  we  are  to  make  improve- 
ment in  the  painting  of  children  it  will  be  in  the  direc- 
tion of  more  exquisite  color  that  we  shall  develop. 

Fragonard  was  the  man  of  all  the  older  men  who 
was  most  successful  in  indicating  this  color-quality. 
He  learned,  in  a  dream,  as  it  were,  the  secret  of  palpi- 
tating color,  and  the  impressionists  consider  him  one  of 
their  artistic  forebears.  In  his  'Child  with  the  Blond 
Hair '  he  has  indicated  the  charm  of  fresh  blond  young 
flesh  in  a  way  that  none  of  the  other  elder  men  ever 
dreamed  of.  He  had  everything,  technically,  that  was 
needful,— skilled  draftsmanship,  charm  of  color,  and 
sense  of  arrangement. 

But,  apart  from  all  this,  it  may  be  that  something 
of  his  success  with  children  came  from  the  fact  that  he 


umuiiiiiliyiHUitiiiiiiM 


32  Great  Portraits  :  Child 

was  a  big  child  himself.  Poor  '*Frago,' 
called  him,  had  all  the  simple-heartednej 
ness  of  a  child.  He  understood  their  r 
ings,  and  yet  he  was  man  enough  to 
humor  and  pathos  of  these  tiny  men  an( 
feels  him  more  in  sympathy  with  chil 
other  painter.  Velasquez,  it  is  true,  p 
with  rare  understanding,  yet  one  sees  \ 
superior  smile  as  he  swept  his  supple  b 
canvas.  Reynolds,  too,  painted  childre 
mon  understanding,  yet  one  fancies  Y 
them  like  an  old  woman  through  hi 
glasses.  But  "Frago"  was  one  of  tl 
child — who  knew  just  enough  of  the  olc 
what  was  significant  and  humorous  in  tli 
world. 

In  none  of  his  portraits  of  children 
cessful  than  in  that  of  '  The  Blond v 
The  little  fellow  is  indicated  with  great 
not  so  much  the  technical  ability — and 
a  past  master  in  technique — as  it  is  the  ( 
color  of  the  thing.  It  is  well  named  *Th 
for  "Fraefo"  was  one  of  the  first  to  "p 


Great  Portraits  :  Children 


much  in  old-fashioned  art-books.  It  is  true  that  Ve 
quez,  and,  for  that  matter,  Van  Dyck,  painted  gn 
than  most  of  their  contemporaries;  yet  to  our  moc 
eyes  their  work  still  seems  rather  yellow.  But  Fn 
nard,  from  a  sort  of  instinct,  painted  ''blond."  E 
his  great  academic  picture,  'The  High  Priest  Cores 
painted  while  he  was  still  a  young  man  and  under  i 
demic  influence,  is  much  more  silvery  in  tone  than 
most  of  the  pictures  painted  about  him. 

Not  only  in  this  picture,  but  in  many  others, 
Fragonard  celebrated  the  charm,  the  humor,  and 
pathos  of  childhood.  There  is  one  of  these — not  a  ] 
trait,  by  the  way — representing  'The  Schoolmistr 
with  her  little  flock  about  her.  Before  her  stands  wh 
pering  a  delightful  little  man,  whose  shirt,  his  only  \ 
ment,  would  hardly  serve  as  an  advertisement  for  n 
shrinkable  soap.  Not  only  in  his  paintings,  but  in 
chalk -drawings  and  in  his  water-color  sketches  of  c 
dren,  was  Fragonard  supremely  successful.  There 
sists  a  sketch  of  his  daughter  Rosalie  a  deux  cray 
which  is  not  only  masterly  in  its  skilful  and  lear 
handling,  but  is  also  full  of  the  freshness  and  charn 
childhood.     "Frago"  loved  flowers  and  children, 

lip     r»nintprl     tlipm     Krk+Vi     -uri+Vi    a    licrli+npcc    nf    ^:cw^n\ 


UHiBHllWfWHfHI' 


36 


Great  Portraits  :  Chile 


Of  course  the  term  "portraits  of  chilt 
broad  one.  For  instance,  we  have  very 
as  Lawrence's  famous  'King  of  Ron 
children  of  five  or  six,  such  as  the  *  Inft 
or  some  of  Bronzino's  dehghtfully  dem 
There  are  what  one  might  call  middle-a 
Goya's  little  'Queen  of  Sicily'— only 
ready  weighed  down  by  regal  dignity, 
are  certain  ones,  such  as  the  girl  in  G 
Cassee,'  who  is  not  a  child— the  whole 
legory  tells  one  that — and  yet,  as  cerU 
** grown  up."  The  puzzled  face  is  stil 
though  the  body  verges  on  maturity. 

In  a  certain  sense  a  young  baby  is 
than  a  child  of  three  or  four.  One  lool 
iron  renderings  of  the  little  Medici  child: 
how  he  achieved  such  absolute  detail, 
such  firmness  of  modeling.  Many,  possi 
ers  nowadays  avail  themselves  of  phot 
out  the  picture,  and  perhaps,  considei 
culties,  they  are  almost  justified.  But  I 
such  aid.  In  some  hidden  way  he  acl 
lute  renderine:.    It  mav  be,  indeed,  tha 


THE  BROKEN-  PITCHER 

GEEUZE 
LOtrVEE,  P^UilS 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  41 

the  poor  frightened  httle  bird  with  all  a  child's  uncon- 
scious cruelty  and  abandon.  One  wonders  whether 
Bronzino  had  some  obscure  idea  of  typifying  the  fright- 
ful cruelty  of  the  Medici-Toledo  strain  by  introducing 
this  incident.  The  poor  little  child  is  innocent  enough; 
though  history  records  that  this  same  Don  Garcia,  when 
a  little  older,  was  accused  of  killing  his  own  brother. 

Although  Don  Garcia  apparently  had  life  enough, 
it  still  remains  probable  that  many  little  princes  posed, 
as  it  were,  in  fear  of  their  lives.  The  little  Infanta  Mar- 
garita stands  as  stiffly  as  possible  among  her  Maids  of 
Honor;  indeed,  what  else  could  the  poor  little  thing  do 
in  her  stiff  robes  of  cramoisie?  Yet,  even  here,  it  is  evi- 
dent enough  that  there  was  difficulty  in  keeping  her 
still,  for  one  maid  is  on  her  knees,  trying  to  amuse  her 
mistress,  while  another  bends  over,  whispering  encour- 
aging words  to  her;  and  the  dwarfs  and  dogs  were  ap- 
parently brought  in  as  diversions.  Indeed,  that  is  the 
motive  of  the  picture.  The  little  episode  amused  Velas- 
quez, and  he  painted  it  just  as  it  was.  It  is  probably  the 
smallest  incident  that  ever  inspired  a  great  picture,  and 
yet  how  great  the  picture  is! —  "The  Theology  of  Paint- 
ing," as  "Fa  Presto,''  the  brilliant  Luca  Giordano, 
called  it.  The  blonde  little  Infanta  probably  never  sus- 
pected that  she  was  helping  in  the  making  of  one  of  the 
great  models  of  painting. 


42  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

No  one  has  been  found  to  paint  a  portrait  of  a  very 
young  child,  though  certain  of  the  elder  painters,  as 
Gerard  David,  have  painted  the  little  Jesus  something 
as  he  may  have  looked  when  only  a  few  weeks  old. 
But  to  the  cold,  unbiased  observer  very  young  children 
are  not  beautiful.  There  is  something  embryonic  about 
them;  it  seems  as  if  they  had  not  quite  arrived  at 
humanity.  On  the  other  hand,  a  child  of  a  year  or 
two,  as  one  guesses  the  King  of  Rome  (L'Aiglon)  in 
Lawrence's  picture  to  be,  often  is  a  delightful  vision; 
although  in  this  particular  instance  one  suspects  Sir 
Thomas  of  having  made  the  child  appear  older  than  he 
really  was,  and  also  of  having  over- insisted  on  any  like- 
ness he  may  have  had  to  the  mighty  Bonaparte. 

When  it  comes  to  a  portrait  of  a  rather  older  child, 
as  in  the  picture  of  Madame  Vigee  Lebrun  and  her 
daughter,  the  problem  is  somewhat  simplified,  though 
even  here  one  can  imagine  an  infinity  of  wriggling, 
and  parental  admonitions.  Indeed,  it  may  have  been  a 
succession  of  mauvais  quatres  d'heure  for  the  poor 
child;  as  Madame  Lebrun,  despite  the  angelic  counte- 
nance which  she  painted  in  her  self-portraits,  had  the 
reputation  of  being  something  of  a  vixen.  This  same 
portrait,  by  the  way,  is  admirably  composed.  It  is  a 
trifle  formal — a  little  academic  in  its  arrangement — but 


MADAME  VIGEE  LEBRUN  AXD    DAUGHTER 
vigJie  lebhun 

liOtrVHE,  PAEIS 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  45 

the  lines  are  often  beautiful,  and,  from  an  intricate  de- 
sign, a  simple  and  satisfactory  effect  is  produced. 

We  may  be  quite  sure  that  the  little  'Queen  of 
Sicily'  kept  as  still  as  a  mouse  while  the  gallant  ex-bull- 
fighter, Goya,  put  her  counterfeit  presentment  on  can- 
vas. She  was  probably  frightened  out  of  her  wits  by  his 
truculent  manner,  but,  besides  this,  no  doubt  the  cares 
of  state  oppressed  the  little  maid.  However,  very  likely 
she  had  not  long  to  pose;  for  Goya,  when  the  fit  was 
on  him,  could  paint  with  immense  rapidity,  using  any- 
thing that  came  handy — his  fingers,  or  even  a  sponge. 
He  sometimes  painted  an  entire  portrait  in  a  day. 
This  particular  picture  looks  more  carefully  done,  and 
it  is,  by  the  way,  perhaps  the  best  portrait  Goya  ever 
did.  Certainly  it  has  the  most  of  charm;  and  to  one 
who  has  only  seen  this  picture  certain  other  of  Goya's 
careless  creations  give  something  of  a  shock. 

Bronzino  is  interesting,  among  many  other  reasons, 
because  he  gives  us  an  insight  into  what  Michael 
Angelo  might  have  done  had  he  attempted  portraiture. 
He  was  a  pupil  of  Michael  Angelo;  and  while  in  his 
treatment  of  the  nude  he  never  went  to  the  excess  of 
the  great  master,  he  had  thoroughly  learned  from  him 
the  lesson  of  pure  form.  Indeed,  in  this  matter  of  abso- 
lute forni  nothing  compares  with  him  till  we  come  to 
the  comparatively  modern  Frenchmen.    As  a  matter  of 


46  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

fact,  Ingres  is  known  to  have  been  greatly  interested  in 
Bronzino's  work,  and  a  fine  portrait  by  Ingres  is  not  un- 
like a  fine  portrait  by  Bronzino.  The  elder  painter's  por- 
traits of  children  are  studied  with  the  same  severity  as 
are  his  portraits  of  older  persons;  but  "out  of  the  strong 
Cometh  forth  sweetness, ' '  and  there  is  a  charm  in  his 
portraits  of  children,  grave  or  gay,  that  comes  from  the 
absolute  justness  of  his  observation. 

The  question  of  hardness  versus  softness  in  the 
treatment  of  children's  portraits  is  an  interesting  one, 
and  a  hard  one  to  solve.  When  one  looks  at  a  fine  por- 
trait by  Reynolds  or  by  Fragonard,  where  something 
of  the  melting  softness  of  a  child  is  expressed,  one  feels 
that  this  is  the  right  way  to  do  the  thing.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  when  one  looks  at  one  of  Bronzino's  nobly 
severe  heads,  or  even  at  something  by  Madame  Vigee 
Lebrun,  one  perceives  that  there  is  much  to  be  said  for 
the  other  side.  For  the  Reynolds,  after  all,  despite  its 
melting  sweetness,  leaves  out  many  of  the  forms  —  and 
many  of  the  forms,  too,  that  are  most  delicious  in  a 
child.  The  delicate  modeling  of  a  child's  nose,  the  way 
in  which  the  red  transparent  skin  of  the  lower  lip 
merges  into  the  rest  of  the  face,  the  impalpable  eye- 
brows, hardly  seen  and  yet  so  full  of  character — these 
things  are  hardly  attempted  by  Reynolds,    and   yet 


QUEEN"  OF  SICILY 

GOT.V 

coij:.ectiox  of  cojitebse  ije  paris 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  49 


Bronzino  has  found  a  way  to  achieve  them  and  still 
preserve  remarkable  simplicity. 

Perhaps  of  all  men  Da  Vinci  best  combined  the 
sense  of  softness,  of  enveloping  air,  with  that  exactness 
of  form  that  we  always  see  and  feel  in  nature.  No 
child-portraits  by  him,  as  far  as  we  know,  exist;  but 
there  do  exist  children  in  his  religious  paintings,  as  well 
as  drawings,  which  show  how  absolutely  he  could  attain 
to  form  without  losing  his  fine  sense  of  the  softness,  the  ' 
fragility,  and  the  vitality  of  a  child. 

One  likes  to  think  of  Rubens,  handsome,  prosperous, 
and  happy,  enlivening  his  leisure  hours  by  painting  his 
two  handsome  boys.  The  picture  was  a  labor  of  love, 
done  at  his  leisure,  and  so  he  was  able  to,  and  did,  carry 
it  farther  than  much  of  his  work.  It  is,  perhaps,  the 
best  of  Rubens' s  portraits— at  least,  the  most  carefully 
studied;  and  because  he  knew  the  children,  had  seen 
them  grow  up  under  his  eyes,  the  character  is  better 
understood  than  in  much  of  his  work.  For  it  must  be 
confessed  that  Rubens,  so  great  in  many  things,  was 
not  at  his  best  in  portraiture.  His  men,  his  women, 
too,  all  look  prosperous,  cheerful,  healthy,  but  they  also 
all  look  the  same;  they  are  all  of  one  family.  He  built 
his  heads  from  a  florid  formula,  rather  than  by  coldly 
observing,  as  did  Velasquez,  the  characteristic  shape,  the 


50  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

personal  color,  of  each  individual.  But  this  portrait  of 
his  children  is  an  exception;  one  feels  their  character 
is  well  indicated. 

Van  Dyck,  immensely  skilful  in  everything,  was  no 
less  so  in  his  portraits  of  children  than  elsewhere.  In- 
deed, his  portraits  of  children  have  this  advantage:  that 
while  he  thought  it  necessary,  in  his  presentments  of 
men  and  women,  to  flatter  them  not  a  little,  and,  there- 
fore, to  change  the  character  and  weaken  the  form,  in 
his  pictures  of  children  he  was  under  no  such  fancied 
obligation.  He  painted  them  much  as  he  thought  they 
looked.  The  portrait  of  the  'Children  of  Charles  I.' 
shows  more  character  in  the  heads  than  one  often 
observes  in  his  pictures  of  older  people;  and  in  the 
'Prince  of  Orange  with  Princess  Marie,'  the  faces, 
while  distinguished,  are  hardly  what  one  would  call 
pretty.  It  is  evident  that  Van  Dyck,  in  this  instance, 
strove  to  paint  them  as  they  were.  Yet,  with  all  his 
skill,  he  missed  something  of  the  child  charm  which 
men  so  different  as  Bronzino,  Velasquez,  and  Greuze 
attained. 

Although  Holbein  apparently  seldom  painted  chil- 
dren, yet  the  few  examples  he  has  produced  of  this  sort 
remain  remarkable  performances.  His  portrait  of  his 
wife  and  children  is  one  of  the  best  things  he  ever  did. 
It  has  not  the  afl^ected  archaism  of  pose  and  modeling 


HOLBEIN'S  WIFE  AND  CHILDRKX 

HOLBEIX 
JiASI.E  JIUSEUM 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  53 

that  was  forced  on  him  by  the  predilections  of  the  Eng- 
lish court;  rather,  it  is  observed  with  great  sincerity  and 
justness,  and  the  result  is  quite  remarkable.  The  chil- 
dren are  certainly  not  what  one  would  call  pretty;  but 
in  a  collection  such  as  this,  where  many  of  the  portraits 
are  of  an  almost  cloying  sweetness,  it  is  something  of  a 
relief  to  come  on  these  honest  Tudesque  faces.  If  Greuze 
made  his  children  too  pretty,  Holbein  doubtless  made 
his  too  ugly.  Still,  his  sincerity  is  edifying.  This  pic- 
ture, it  is  said,  had  a  great  effect  on  the  art  of  Wilhelm 
Leibl,  who  was  perhaps  the  strongest  painter  of  modern 
Germany. 

Nattier  has  a  charm  that  is  difficult  to  analyze.  Not 
that  he  is  very  subtle,  but  his  pictures  are  so  pretty,  so 
mievre,  that  one  feels  they  should  be  considered  meretri- 
cious, and  yet,  for  all  that,  a  very  distinct  charm  ex- 
hales from  these  delicate,  anaemic  faces  of  the  little 
French  Princesses,  so  raffinees,  so  young  ladylike,  so  like 
intensely  cultivated  flowers.  How  charming  is  this  little 
Madame  Louise  of  France !  At  first  sight,  a  young  lady, 
so  prim  is  she,  so  anxious  to  be  comme  il  faut.  Yet 
when  one  looks  well  at  the  face  it  is  the  face  of  a  little 
girl;  but  a  little  girl  most  anxious  to  be  sage,  to  rightly 
do  her  little  part  in  the  court  of  the  mighty  and  pleasant 
land  of  France.  There  is  a  pathos  in  the  picture,  whether 
perceived  by  Nattier  or  not — in  this  little  child  of  eleven. 


54  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

who,  in  our  country,  would  be  climbing  trees,  but  here 
is  bound  down  in  her  stiff  court  dress  to  les  conve- 
nances. 

Greuze,  again,  was  above  all  things  a  painter  of  chil- 
dren. It  is  in  his  children's  heads  that  he  is  indeed  suc- 
cessful, for  the  softness,  that  was  in  much  of  his  work 
a  defect,  was  suited  to  the  rounded,  immature  forms  of 
children.  Nothing  could  be  prettier — more  "cunning," 
as  the  women  of  our  day  delight  to  say — than  his  por- 
trait of  the  little  Countess  Mollien  guarding  her  armful 
of  puppies  with  all  a  child's  pathetic  insistence.  It  is 
interesting  to  compare  the  technique  of  Greuze  with 
that  of  Reynolds  and  others  of  the  English  school. 
Though  Greuze  is  just  as  soft  and  melting  as  they,  his 
manner  of  drawing,  of  painting,  an  eye  or  a  mouth  is 
at  the  same  time  more  academic  and  truer  to  nature 
than  is  theirs;  in  short,  it  is  better  observed.  Indeed, 
Greuze,  while  rather  over-rated  in  his  day,  is  now  under- 
rated. His  great  defect  was,  at  the  same  time,  one  of 
his  qualities:  that  he  made  things  soft  and  pretty.  But 
he  was  a  very  able  technician,  and,  more  than  most 
men,  he  had  a  sense  of  the  charm  of  childhood. 

Gainsborough,  though  first  and  foremost  a  painter 
of  woman,  could  paint  a  delightful  portrait  of  a  child. 
The  'Blue  Boy'  is  one  of  the  most  famous  portraits  in 
the  world — largely  through  the  well-known  story  of 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  55 

how  Gainsborough  painted  it  to  disprove  Sir  Joshua's 
dictum  that  blue  did  not  look  well  in  the  middle  of  a 
picture.  The  curious  thing  about  his  effort,  as  has  often 
enough  been  pointed  out,  is  that  the  boy  is  really  dressed 
in  green  rather  than  blue;  that  is,  the  blue  is  so  bathed 
in  that  famous  golden  glow  that  writers  of  his  time 
speak  of  that  the  hue  is  subtly  changed  to  green.  Gains- 
borough also  painted  a  'Pink  Boy,'  but  he,  though  he 
is  pretty,  has  never  been  regarded  as  so  successful  as  his 
more  famous  blue  brother. 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  himself  considered  the  'Straw- 
berry Girl'  to  be  one  of  his  finest  performances.  It  was, 
he  said,  '*one  of  the  half-dozen  original  things  which  no 
man  ever  exceeded  in  his  life's  work."  And  so  it  is,  in- 
deed, charming  and  interesting,  but  one  is  at  a  loss  to 
know  why  Sir  Joshua  should  have  regarded  it  as  partic- 
ularly original.  It  is,  let  us  say,  personal  rather  than 
original.  It  has  various  of  Reynolds's  ear-marks  which 
appear  often  enough  in  others  of  his  works ;  for  instance, 
the  wide-open,  mouselike  eyes  were  features  which  he 
delighted  in.  Indeed,  he  painted  a  picture,  which  he 
called  'Muscipula,'  of  a  little  girl  holding  a  mouse.  In 
this  he  tried  to  bring  out  a  real  or  fancied  resemblance 
between  the  little  girl  and  the  mouse.  In  this  'Straw- 
berry Girl,'  which  is  pretty  enough  in  the  main,  one 
notes,  besides  the  enormous  eyes,  a  curious  length  in 


56 


Great  Portraits  :  Chil 


the  nose  and  a  corresponding  shortness 
to  the  chin.     The  face  can  hardly  be 
and  yet  it  has  something  of  the  allure 
best  efforts  possess. 

Whistler's  portraits  of  children  are 
successful  performances.  His  portrai 
ander,*  which  represents  a  child  of  tei 
at  the  time  of  its  first  exhibition,  sup 
much  in  the  manner  of  Velasquez.  Su] 
be  so.  The  arrangement  is  a  combine 
learned  from  Velasquez  and  from  the 
the  two  finest  things  in  it,  the  design  j 
quite  Whistler's  own.  Whistler's  cok 
inspired  by  Velasquez,  but  it  became  c 
ent  thing.  There  is  in  it,  especially  as 
portrait,  a  certain  gray  tonality  which 
had.  Probably  he  never  tried  for  it,  a 
much  warmer  in  tone.  On  the  other 
tion  of  purplish  or  grayish  nuances  c 
portrait  of  Philip  IV. ,  London,  is  more 
American's. 

Still,  this  portrait  of  Whistler's  i 


.><M-'ni<mMHMmMmmm<>«>«)NIUMiltWIIM)ttmfl1HtmiBH|Wmtit)ittfH|i|lflUfi' 


^WltlltlHtUttlty^^ 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  59 

and  dirty  in  color,  and  the  face  was  thought  cross  and 
ugly.  Like  almost  all  criticism,  these  strictures  had  a 
certain  basis  of  fact.  The  color  is  a  trifle  blackish;  the 
child,  while  not  ugly,  is  certainly  not  exactly  pretty. 
But  the  picture  has  distinction  and  charm,  and,  for 
Whistler,  it  was  very  well  made.  One  feels  that  Alice 
in  Wonderiand  may  have  looked  something  like  this: 
indeed,  Tenniel's  illustrations  to  Lewis  Carroll's  delight- 
ful work  represent  Alice  in  much  the  same  costume. 
How  strange  and  farouche  this  little  English  maid 
seems,  surrounded,  as  she  is  here,  by  prim  princesses  of 
foreign  lands! 

Another  picture  which  betrays  in  quite  a  different 
way  the  influence  of  Velasquez  is  Manet's  'Boy  with 
the  Sword.'  Curiously  enough,  neither  Manet  nor 
Whistler  were  ever  in  Spain;  that  is,  Whistler  never 
was,  and  Manet  spent  only  a  few  weeks  there,  long  after 
he  had  painted  his  'Boy  with  the  Sword. '  But  it  is  not 
hard  to  get  a  very  good  idea  of  Velasquez  in  London's 
National  Gallery;  and  while  the  Louvre  is  not  so  full  of 
fine  examples  of  the  Spaniard,  it  is  known  that  Manet 
copied  one  Velasquez  painting  there,  and  doubtless  knew 
the  rest  by  heart.  Although  this  picture  was  painted 
quite  early  in  Manet's  artistic  life,  and  although  it  has 
no  signs  of  the  pure  color  of  his  later  days,  it  is  still  very 
characteristic  of  his  style:  for  instance,  the  face,  painted 


60  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

so  flat  and  without  modeling;  the  eyes,  each  made  in 
with  a  touch  or  two;  and  the  coat,  again,  painted  in 
almost  flat  tones  of  the  famous  **  Manet  black." 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  so  little  a  matter  as  the 
manner  in  which  a  painter  lays  on  the  paint  should  de- 
cide whether  or  no  he  shall  be  a  painter  of  children. 
Yet  this  thing  is,  in  a  measure,  true.  For  instance,  in 
the  work  of  Franz  Hals  we  find  little  or  no  painting  of 
children;  certainly  nothing  that  is  remarkably  interest- 
ing. Now  Hals  had  a  direct,  sharp,  crisp  stroke  that 
was  admirable  for  expressing  the  well-marked  planes  on 
the  faces  of  middle-aged  people;  but  when  it  came  to 
painting  children  it  was  not  so  happy.  For  in  a  child's 
head  the  planes  all  melt  one  into  the  other,  so  that  the 
most  successful  painters  of  children  are  either  men  like 
Velasquez  and  Fragonard,  or  the  modern  Carriere, 
whose  manner  is  loose  and  flowing,  expressing  much  of 
what  the  Italians  called  morbidezza;  or  else  it  is  the 
rather  formal  classicist,  as  Madame  Lebrun  or  Bronzino, 
who  is  successful.  His  or  her  precise,  rather  "licked" 
manner  serves  to  preserve  the  forms  precisely,  indeed, 
yet  with  the  gradations  from  one  plane  to  another  care- 
fully observed.  It  is  curious  that  so  physical  a  matter 
should  aflect  the  painting  of  children;  but,  after  all, 
Hals' s  direct,  rather  brutale  touch  argued  a  lack  of 
sensitiveness  to  delicate  nuances,  and  children  are  all 


BOY  WITH  A  SWORD 

MAoSET 
METKOPOLITASr  MtTSEUM.  NEW   TOHK 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  63 


suggestion  and  the  beginning  of  things,  all  cloud  and 
air. 

Many  modern  portrait-painters  make  this  mistake  of 
painting  all  sorts  of  heads  in  the  same  technique.  Most 
of  them  have  a  way  of  putting  in  the  "planes"  of  the 
head  in  broad  brush- strokes,  and  as  far  as  the  handling 
goes  are  apt  to  paint  a  child's  head  with  much  the  same 
facture  as  the  head  of  a  man.  They  do  not  stop  to 
consider  that  the  character  of  each  head  can  best  be 
expressed  by  a  particular  style  of  workmanship.  For 
instance,  the  almost  scratchy,  stringy  technique  which 
would  do  very  well  in  rendering  an  old  head  would  not 
do  at  all  in  suggesting  the  head  of  a  middle-aged  man. 
And  in  the  same  way,  the  ** square  touch"  which  did 
well  enough  in  painting  a  man  would  not  succeed  so 
well  in  portraying  a  child. 

Velasquez  understood  this  particularly  well.  One 
might  almost  say  that  each  one  of  his  portrait  heads  is 
painted  diiFerently.  At  least  his  old  men  are  very  dif- 
ferent from  his  men  of  the  middle  years,  and  he  really 
invented  a  technique  for  the  rendering  of  children  that, 
in  its  sweeping  softness,  preserves  something  of  the 
roundness  and  tenderness  of  a  child's  form.  Velasquez's 
work  is  a  little  misleading  in  some  respects:  his  touch 
is  so  loose  and  soft,  almost  a  smear,  that  one  does  not 
realize,  till  after  careful  study,  how  subtly  and  delicately 


64  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

the  most  impalpable  forms  are  indicated,  or,  at  least, 
suggested.  He  had  great  sympathy  for  and  interest  in 
children,  but  one  feels  this  sympathy  was  something 
like  the  feeling  one  has  for  a  beautiful  fresh  blossom, 
something  rather  impersonal.  It  is  the  beauty  of  the 
blossom  one  cares  for;  one  is  not  interested  in  that  par- 
ticular blossom's  individuality.  And  so  with  Velasquez 
one  feels  that  he  was  interested  in  the  delicious  aspect 
of  the  little  Hapsburg  Infanta,  but  one  doubts  if  he 
tried  to  analyze  her  immature  mind.  In  this  no  doubt 
he  was  right,  for  who  can  read  the  face? 

We  sometimes  feel  that  many  portraits  of  children 
are  over-formal  in  pose,  yet  it  should  be  remembered  that 
the  unfortunate  painter,  by  the  conditions  of  his  craft, 
is  only  able  to  choose  one  out  of  a  thousand  movements. 
We  see  a  child  at  play:  at  every  moment  it  takes  some 
divinely  graceful  and  infantile  pose.  We  feel  now  is  the 
moment — or  now— or,  again,  just  now.  Yes,  but  which 
of  the  various  moments  is  the  one  to  choose?  This  ques- 
tion of  gesture  comes  into  the  painting  of  women's  por- 
traits, too,  and  of  men's  as  well.  One  desires  a  subtle 
something  in  the  set  of  the  head,  in  the  movement  of 
the  hands,  that  shall  give  it  the  look  of  life,  and,  too, 
differentiate  it  from  the  portraits  of  other  people.  In 
portraits  of  men  a  supreme  example  of  success  in  this 


RUBENS'S  SONS 

HUBENS 
ilKCHTEXSTEIX  GALLEHY,  VIEXNA 


Great  Portraits  :  Children  67 

eifbrt  is  Ingres 's  portrait  of  Monsieur  Bert  in.  The  fine 
old  man  seems  just  ready  to  spring  from  his  chair,  and 
yet  he  is  immobile :  there  is  repose  to  the  picture  as  well 
as  life.  This  is  the  ideal.  Yet  in  many  portraits,  in 
many  fine  portraits,  too,  notably  among  the  Venetians, 
the  pose  is  perfectly  commonplace — agreeable  enough, 
but  without  betraying  any  search  for  originality  or  indi- 
viduality. 

In  a  child's  portrait  naturally  the  same  difficulty 
arises,  only  it  is  increased  a  hundred-fold.  An  older  per- 
son comes  to  have  a  dozen  or  so  of  gestures  which  are 
characteristic  and  suggestive  of  just  that  particular  man 
or  woman.  It  remains,  then,  to  select  that  gesture 
which  is  at  the  same  time  the  most  individual  and  the 
most  graceful.  But  a  child  is,  as  it  were,  experiment- 
ing with  gesture:  each  minute  he  tries  a  new  one,  each 
one  more  graceful  than  the  last,  till  the  distracted 
painter  falls  back  on  a  pose  of  comparative  common- 
placeness. 

But  there  is  more  than  this  to  the  matter.  Let  us 
suppose  the  painter  does  paint  his  child  laughing,  or 
running  after  its  hoop,  or  in  some  other  marked  move- 
ment. Well,  one  wearies  at  the  end  of  seeing  a  person 
perpetually  smiling,  never  doing  anything  but  smile. 
In  the  same  way,  too,  one  wearies  of  seeing  the  child 
perpetually  balance  upon  one  toe.     This  suggestion  of 


68  Great  Portraits  :  Children 

life,  of  movement,  can  be  accomplished — it  has  been 
done— but  it  adds  immensely  to  the  difficulty  of  the 
problem. 

The  truth  is  that  what  we  really  desire  is  the  look, 
not  of  a  moving  figure,  but  of  one  just  about  to  move. 
The  Greeks  understood  this,  and  one  of  the  things  that 
makes  for  the  aspect  of  life  in  their  statues  is  this  look 
of  being  just  about  to  move.  Their  figures  are  seldom 
in  strong  action.  On  the  other  hand,  they  seem  always 
just  about  to  move.  One  way  in  which  they  accom- 
plished this  was  by  always  making  their  statues  just  a 
trifle  off  the  balance,  so  that  many  of  their  figures  have 
to  be  held  up  by  a  sculptured  stump  of  a  tree  at  the  side 
of  the  leg.  This  lack  of  absolute  balance  gives  a  sense 
of  life.  One  feels  that  the  figure  must  move  in  a 
moment  in  order  not  to  fall.  Moreover,  the  very  lack 
of  balance  suggests  interior  life,  as  one  often  holds  one's 
self  in  some  unbalanced  position  by  a  sort  of  fly-like 
attraction  of  the  foot  to  the  ground. 

Certain  child-portraits  have  something  of  this  move- 
ment, potential  rather  than  exerted.  For  instance, 
Fragonard's  'Child  with  the  Blond  Hair'  seems  not 
quite  smihng  indeed,  but  surely  just  about  to  smile. 
When  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  this  is  the  charm  of 
many  a  fine  portrait.     The  'Mona  Lisa'  is  really  not 


WaLLIAM  II.   OF   XASSAU 

TAX  DYCK 
IIKRMITAGE  GALLF.HV,   ST.   PETERSBUKll 


■MM 


mum^mmmmwp  ii|i  !|  j    ,M!i!|  "M!!!,.|i!  IHIIMI 


Great  Portraits  :  Children 

quite  smiling:  rather,  she  has  just  been  smiling;  s" 
just  about  to  smile  again. 

This  quality  of  life,  of,  at  least,  potential  vitf 
while  important  in  all  portraits,  seems  particularly 
portant  in  the  portraits  of  children.  For  in  porl 
of  men  and  women,  old  people  especially,  repose  i: 
amiss.     Some  of  them  sit  like 

"  Gray-haired  Saturn,  quiet  as  a  stone ; " 

and  if  their  portrait  has  a  certain  immobility  it  is 
But  a  child  is  a  bundle  of  nerves,  never  still  a  mon 
and  though,  by  the  conditions  of  his  art,  a  porl 
painter  is  forced  to  paint  him  immobile,  he  striv< 
suggest  potential  movement  as  much  as  may  be. 

Speaking  broadly,  one  might  say  that  those  ai 

who  have  painted  women  well  have  also  painted 

dren  well.     One  thinks  of  Gainsborough  or  of  Mac 

Vigee  Lebrun  in  this  connection.     Yet  this  rule 

not  always  hold;  for  David,  who  was  quite  master 

his  woman- portraits,  often  painted  children  as  if 

were  little  men.     One  notes  this  in  the  portra 

Michel  Gerard  and  his  children.     On  the  other  1: 
c*      T T r> ij„ x„   1 — ,•    j-^j    „i,: 


74 


Great  Portraits  :  Chila 


still,  in  his  portraits  of  children  he  is  mc 
*  Infanta  Margarita, '  the  same  child  in 
and  the  *  Infanta  Rose '  are  among  the 
traits  of  the  world. 


A  curious  reaction  is  seen  in  the  w 
costumes  of  children  in  famous  port 
modern  costume  of  children.  As  a  chik 
its  own  costume,  it  is  easier  to  try  exp( 
luckless  little  being.  For  instance,  not  i 
haps  twenty  years  ago,  what  were  ba 
*' bangs"  came  very  much  into  favor  fo 
idea  was  taken,  one  must  believe,  from 
trait  of  the  'Children  of  Charles  th( 
Antony  Van  Dyck.  Again,  certain  vei 
knots  of  pink  ribbon  fastening  blonde 
nizes  as  taken  from  Velasquez's  famou 
garita. '  The  costumes  of  Velasquez's  In: 
much  criticized  as  hopelessly  ugly.  Of 
rather  stiff,  but  they  have  a  certain  beau 
For  instance,  the  chief  charm  of  Vela 
Rose'  comes  from  the  costume,  whic 
affair  of  red  shot  with  silver;  the  red  is 


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Great  Portraits  :  Children 


the  flower-like  look  of  the  hands,  and  intensifies  the 
icate  oval  of  the  face. 

The  cult  of  the  child  did  not  exist  in  the  olden  d 
as  it  does  now.  Nobody  cared  very  much  what 
child  thought  or  did,  provided  it  stayed  safe  and  soi 
There  were  no  Stanley  Halls  in  those  times,  to  1 
down  the  first  hundred  words  a  child  learned  to 
and  to  philosophize  upon  them.  A  child  was  a  chil 
these  oldsters,  and  that  was  all.  This  made  their 
traits  more  objective,  and  probably  that  was  a  ^ 
thing.  At  the  same  time,  they  were  not  dispose( 
regard  a  child  as  so  intricate  an  organism  as  we  do  r 
and  this  may  explain,  too,  why  there  were  so  few 
traits  of  children  long  ago.  People  did  not  realize  tl 
as  they  do  now,  how  important  the  child  was;  that 
"child  is  father  of  the  man."  With  them  a  child 
veloped  as  a  plant.  Perhaps  they  were  not  altoge 
wrong  in  their  point  of  view.  With  them  there  wa 
digging  up  of  seeds  to  see  if  they  would  grow.  1 
nourished  the  young  plant  and  allowed  it  to  deve 
and  trusted  that  heaven  would  give  the  increase.  ' 
is  somewhat  beside  the  mark.    The  point  is  that  < 


78 


Great  Portraits  :  Chi 


elders,  that  are  studied  further  than 
done  nowadays,  it  came  about  from 
exact  study  of  detail,  rather  than  fro] 
child-psychology. 

Perhaps  if,  in  the  future,  some  po 
made,  better  even  than  the  old  on 
come  about  from  some  mixture  of  the 
a  more  sensitive  feeling  of  color;  oft! 
a  child's  face;  and,  too,  a  more  syn 
subtle  sense  of  the  little  thing's  mood 
gesture  and  its  individual  character 
indeed,  but  already  its  own. 


^i!|!l:!i!'!1ia!IM!in-!:r!ri!!'!'!n! ''!!!!!!;bpi'!"!!''' '^^ 


